Title: Eye of the Beholder
Author: Zea T
'Verse: Movie-verse AU (sequel to 'Reasons to Go On')
Rating: T
Characters: Lennox, Sideswipe, Prowl
Warnings: Mild bad language, sparkling

Summary: Even after a lifetime working with the Autobots there are questions General Lennox has never got around to asking.

Notes: This story is set a while after the ending of my earlier fic 'Reasons to Go On' which brought Movie-verse Prowl to Earth. It assumes that you have read that story for context. In brief - many years after the events of the first two films, the Autobots are still getting used to a new arrival on base.

This is just a short one-shot. It's been sitting on my computer for a few months now, so I thought I'd share. Comments or criticisms are always welcome.

It was almost two in the morning when General William Lennox jerked awake. His lifetime of training allowed perhaps a second and a half of confusion before he took in his surroundings and relaxed with a groan.

He'd already been tired when he sat down to watch the late-night news. Even on a good day, the reports of conflict based on skin colour, religion, ethnic or cultural differences would weary him. He'd seen – more clearly than just about any one else on the planet – where that kind of intolerance could lead. Exhausted after a day six hours longer than usual – cross time-zone travel being what it was – he hadn't got much further than listening in frustration to the headlines. After that his memory became hazy, but it didn't take much imagination to fill in the gaps.

The lights in the rec-room had been dimmed, and the television monitor in front of him set to standby. Someone had taken pity on the old soldier, throwing a rug across his legs. Someone human. A mech would simply have picked him up and carried him to his own quarters. Hard to decide, really, whether being toted to bed like an infant or tucked in where he dozed like an old man was more humiliating.

He allowed himself a few moments to brood, running a hand back through his thinning, grey-touched hair and ruefully aware of his thickening girth. Working around the 'bots had kept him active decades longer than usual in Special Forces, but not even claiming Ratchet as his medic could hold back the years indefinitely. Sighing, he shook head. He couldn't complain. Live fast, die young might be a rebel's dream, but never his. He'd seen too many men die before their time to lament living his own life to the fullest. And the extra years had shown him wonders he'd never dreamed of, even as a child. Falling asleep for a few hours in front of a news bulletin was a small penalty to pay.

That didn't stop it being damned embarrassing, and the ache of his tired muscles intensely frustrating.

Fretting about it wasn't getting him back to his own quarters or his more comfortable - if still army-issue - bed. Frowning at his unaccustomed introspection, Lennox pushed himself upright… and froze.

The sound that had woken him – forgotten in his waking confusion – came again. A rapid skittering noise, it could have been some rodent, or maybe one of the base's semi-feral cats in swift pursuit of one, if it hadn't been for the ringing, metallic overtones.

There was no reason to automatically assume the sound was suspicious, not here in the centre of the Autobot presence on Earth. Except… there was something surreptitious about the movement in the darkness, and it sounded far more rapid than that he associated with most of the mechs in NEST. Uncertain, Lennox wracked his memory, trying to remember which, if any, of the smaller Cybertronians might be on base. It was an uncomfortable fact that the Decepticons still had more mechs in that category than the Autobots.

Lennox opened his mouth to call out, and hesitated.

Had there always been a green glow under the side-table? It had the same vibrant hue as the status LED on any number of consumer electronics, but Lennox was almost certain that nothing under there that met that description… nothing that glinted in the half-light and made quiet scraping sounds in a night-darkened room.

Side-arms weren't carried on Base, at least not by ranking generals. Lennox squinted and then eased to his feet, wary and still not sure if he was over-reacting.

If he had been carrying, he'd certainly have regretted his instinctive reaction as the door to the rec-room slammed open behind him. A huge figure filled it, silver armour glinting in the ethereal glow of its own blue optics.

"Have you seen him?!"

"Sideswipe?"

"Prowl's going to kill me! I'd swear I only looked away for a minute or two. I've got to find him!"

The chitter of electronic laughter was high pitched and muffled… too quiet for Sideswipe's battle-tuned audials to pick up from a height of twenty-something feet. Lennox was a little closer to the ground. He glanced sideways, tension easing from his neck muscles. Where he'd thought he'd seen a green glow, now there was one in a soft and familiar blue. He couldn't make out the small form behind the glow, but he was pretty sure now what he'd see if he could.

"You're babysitting?" He couldn't help a little gentle teasing, not for a mech he knew as well as Sides. "And you've lost the baby?"

The bright alarm in Sideswipe's optics made it clear that he was missing the joke. "He's got to be somewhere! You sure he didn't come this way?" Sideswipe groaned, shaking his helm and going on before Lennox could reply. "Prowl is going to kill me," he repeated morosely.

"Jester." The new voice spoke with calm reserve, drifting out of the night air from just behind Sideswipe's silver-clad shoulder. The front-line warrior jumped as if Megatron himself was behind him. Taking a couple of steps into the room, Sideswipe spun on the spot.

"Prowl! Ah…"

Prowl stepped forward, his door-winged frame filling the doorway very nearly as completely as Sideswipe's had. The tactician held up a hand to still the stammered explanation. The expression on his faceplates was serious, but amusement glinted around his pale blue optics. "Jester, please come out from under the sideboard. At once."

If the Base's only infant Cybertronian was unhappy about being caught, it didn't show. The tiny door-winged form of Jester squirmed out from under the table, chirruping in self-satisfaction. Laughter spilled from the little mech, his arms reaching upwards as he ran towards his parent. Prowl crouched to catch his son, gathering the baby in his arms and touching his helm to Jester's in an affectionate gesture.

For a moment, Prowl just held his infant. He pulled back slowly, looking down into the small face with amused resignation. Jester was still laughing, chattering to his father in what Lennox had been told was a mixture of Cybertronian words and infant babble. Prowl stroked his son's door-wings with a tender servo-tip. His stoic demeanour softened, the façade shattered, as always, by the baby's presence.

Sideswipe sagged, relief spilling off his huge silver frame in waves. He shook his helm, mouth opening and closing wordlessly.

Prowl nodded, inclining his helm in courteous, albeit belated, greeting.

"General." He paused. "Sideswipe."

"I swear, Prowl, I don't know how he got out…"

Prowl listened gravely to the stumbling explanation. His servo was cradling his son's helm now, brushing past the tiny blue visor that protected the infant's over-sensitive optics. It was still difficult to take Jester outside of the command hangar in anything brighter than deep twilight. Small surprise, then, that nocturnal adventures made up for the infant's constrained days. Lennox had seen the guards' reports; he knew for certain that Jester had given Prowl the slip too, at least once before tonight. Prowl knew that he knew. Sideswipe, it seemed, was oblivious to the whole thing.

The front-line warrior ran down, his shamefaced expression amusingly at odds with his usual arrogance.

"Inattention while minding infants is unwise." Prowl held his subordinate's gaze for long enough to drive the lesson home, before allowing a gentle smile to ghost across his faceplates. He shook his helm, giving his friend a wry look. "Relax, Sideswipe. Since Jester became fully mobile, he has escaped every babysitter I have entrusted him to. I think he's only waited this long to try it on you because he likes you. No harm has come of the adventure."

Sideswipe's shoulders straightened. He threw an incredulous glance at the infant, only for it to soften as Jester looked at him and warbled an electronic laugh.

"Little fragger…"

"Language!" Lennox hadn't been father to a small child for several decades, but the automatic rebuke spilled from him in ragged unison with Prowl's.

Sideswipe smirked down at him, ignoring Prowl for the moment, now that his guilt had been assuaged.

"You okay, general? You were looking kind of freaked when I arrived."

Lennox raised a wry eyebrow. "And there I thought you were too busy freaking yourself to notice." He shook his head, angling it back to look up at both mechs. "I do have a question though."

"We would be happy to answer any query you may have."

"So, I was wondering... is the colour of your optics optional?"

The question had honestly never occurred to him before. Decepticons had red optics. Autobots had blue – that was how things were. Sure a couple of mechs had changed sides, and colours, but Lennox had assumed – insofar as he'd thought about it at all - that it took a medic's intervention to make the transition.

That didn't explain what he'd just seen.

Sideswipe and Prowl were looking at him with open surprise in their expressions. Prowl's doorwings were flared, framing his helm. Sideswipe's fists had clenched – always a warning that a subject skirted rocky ground for the warrior. For several seconds, Lennox hesitated then waved a dismissive hand, experience telling him to withdraw his question at once.

Prowl didn't accept the dismissal. The tall mech took a moment to reach out, laying a light servo on his younger friend's arm, before speaking in a calm, clinical tone.

"Whether sparked independently or after intercession through the AllSpark, most mechs received functional coding for their optics from one or both genitors, fixing their natural shade. Cosmetic alterations to that intrinsic colouration are relatively straightforward, so, in that sense, yes: optic colour could be deemed optional." He paused, his door-wings held rigid. "However, given the nature of Cybertronian social structure, relatively few were permitted the freedom to apply such elective changes… before the Fall." The tactician wasn't looking at Sideswipe. It might have been happenstance, but Lennox had the feeling Prowl was very deliberately not engaging the warrior in optic-to-optic contact. "More permanent shifts in the baseline colour – such that the chosen optical wavelength remains constant after stasis lock, when waking, or under duress – require more complex coding, and are the province of medical personnel."

The social structure thing probably explained Sideswipe's angst. After decades working with the Autobots, Lennox still had only the vaguest grasp of their pre-war society and how the individuals he knew fit into it. Lennox would lay good money though that Sideswipe had never enjoyed the luxury of choosing his optic colouring in those hard years, even before Cybertron went to the Pit. And it certainly made the whole colour-by-faction thing more complicated too. Did it mean that the Decepticons had chosen a colour most would otherwise be denied, or that the privileged amongst the Autobots had given up a freedom they were embarrassed to claim? Lennox couldn't think of a polite way of phrasing the question, and the tension in the frame of his two friends warned him not to push it. He nodded, accepting the explanation for what it was worth, and was a little surprised when Prowl turned a considering look on him rather than changing the subject.

"General… William, while you are welcome to any information you wish regarding our culture, I must admit to wondering just why this issue has arisen now."

Lennox hesitated. He'd been half-awake, confused after his long day and short sleep… could he be sure what his eyes had told him?

Yes.

He was a trained observer. He knew for damn sure what he'd seen, and from Prowl's bemused tone, the mech had no idea. Lennox nodded towards the sparkling resting against his father's shoulder, trying to keep his tone casual even as Prowl's servos came up protectively around his offspring.

"So, ah, if it's pretty easy… then, say, Jester there could pick out another colour?"

"At his age?" Sideswipe snorted, folding his arms across his chest. "Not a chance. He'll have his natural colour and that's it."

Prowl was looking down at his son with a curious expression. Sensing the scrutiny, Jester warbled a query. Prowl soothed the infant, stroking his helm. It was a few seconds before he spoke, not looking at either the human general or his fellow mech.

"That is not strictly true. Jester inherited his core coding from both Jazz and I. That likely included optic override codes alongside his natural colouration. Those could manifest at an early stage in his development."

Sideswipe's confused frown mirrored Lennox's own.

"Why would he have overrides?" The warrior rocked on his pedes, studying little Jester thoughtfully. "Jazz's special ops codes? So he could go red as well as blue? Better tell the guards about that one, just in case."

Prowl froze, shuddering. He held the fragile infant a little closer and Lennox didn't have to check his handheld to guess that an appropriate warning was already being transmitted to all relevant parties.

"It hadn't occurred to me that might be an issue." Prowl glanced at Sideswipe, and then away as if reluctant. "However, Ratchet does suspect that blue is not Jester's natural colour, and that an override to that effect is already in place and stable."

This time Sideswipe's expression was one of pure bewilderment. "But Jazz was from Iacon, right? And you're Praxian."

"Indeed." Whatever Prowl was embarrassed about, he hesitated good and long before filling in the gaps for the fascinated human at his feet. "As Sideswipe suggests, General Lennox, both Iacon and Praxus were known for producing mechs with characteristically blue optic shades. Other colourings were extremely unusual for those from either city."

Lennox stroked his chin. "But not impossible?"

"Some colours were so rare as to be considered so." Prowl shifted the infant from his shoulder, supporting the little mech, and raising him level with his father's helm. "Jester, can you change your optics for me? Your pretty optics, sweet-spark, can I see them?"

The infant understood a hell of a lot more English than Lennox did Cybertronian. Even so, the confusion on Jester's face was easy to read. The little mech squirmed, made uncomfortable by the intense scrutiny.

"I can show him." Sideswipe's tone was gruff, unhappy. He glanced at Lennox and then away. "Give him to me. I can go back to my natural colour so he gets the idea."

"That will not be necessary." Prowl's voice softened, his optics still on the child. "You and your brother chose to reject your original colour for good reason. I understand that." He paused. "Jester, look at me. Watch my optics." He murmured first in English, and then in Cybertronian, the effort to train Jester's neural net as bilingual an ongoing one. He waited until Jester chirruped, curious and still confused, before nodding once.

The change was slow, subtle at first but then gaining pace as it progressed. The blue in Prowl's calm optics faded first to a paler shade and then to something close to a bright white. Only then did streaks of another colour appear, swimming into sight as the glare faded.

"Whoa…"

Lennox felt much the same, but he didn't expect the exclamation to come from Sideswipe. At a guess, the yellow-gold now glowing from Prowl's optics was one of those rare colours he'd mentioned before.

Sideswipe reached out, servo extended as if he was going to touch the other mech's faceplates, before remembering himself and jerking back. It took a couple of seconds for the mech's equilibrium to re-establish.

"Don't think I've ever seen gold optics in person before." He gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Guess the slums of Kaon weren't high on the must-see list for your lot."

Prowl shook his helm, his expression regretful, even if his voice stayed soft and calm. "We were not encouraged to mingle with others as younglings. The trait was usually sub-dominant. Some families deemed the identification of suitable partners, and bonding to perpetuate the coloration, of overriding importance. They took no chances."

Sideswipe snorted. "Like any of those fraggers were ever sub-dominant about anything!"

"I'm sorry."

Sideswipe's hesitation lasted just long enough to let Lennox know that Prowl's low apology wasn't a matter easily brushed aside, despite his friend's shrug.

"Wasn't your fault. Besides, you chose to go blue."

"As did you."

The moment of heavy silence was broken by a bright chirp, cheerfully at odds with the prevailing mood. Sideswipe and Prowl both glanced down at the infant Prowl held… and stared.

"Okay." The tension was gone from Sideswipe's voice, replaced by thorough bemusement. "Dominant or not, I wasn't expecting that."

"Nor was I," Prowl admitted.

"I was." Lennox couldn't help but smile as three pairs of optics turned to him, the smallest protected by a visor and glowing a bright, vibrant green. "Kind of threw me when I woke up."

Sideswipe started laughing, a deep rolling laugh that set Jester off into chuckles of his own. Sideswipe reached out, plucking the infant from his father's servo and holding him up by the scruff of his back armour.

"You're just determined to be unique, aren't you, sparkling?" He shook his helm. "Blue optics from Jazz, gold from Prowl, red overrides and blue overrides in your core coding, and you go with green?"

Prowl sighed. "Ratchet will be unamused."

"He'll cope." Lennox laughed, as little Jester looked back at Sideswipe, unabashed. The sparkling's expression was still smiling but his tiny door-wings were hanging down now. Pea-green optics cycled, flickered, and the visor reset to blue with no more than a sleepy warble from its owner. "It looks like someone is ready for recharge."

"Indeed. It is past time." Prowl took his son back, cradling the child to his shoulder. Jester warbled again, already drowsing as he settled against his father. Prowl turned to leave and hesitated, glancing back at Sideswipe and Lennox.

"Jester will learn that choices have to be made in this world. He will also learn that it is not outside appearance that defines us, but the spark within. That is true for all, even for those of us to whom the lesson came late."

The tactician left, taking his infant. Sideswipe's gaze followed them, thoughtful and lost in memories. For an instant, just an instant, the front-line warrior's optics flickered to a vivid scarlet, before returning to the blue he'd chosen and fought for. The way Sideswipe glanced at Lennox made it clear he'd been given a glimpse others would die for. He nodded back, recognising the trust and the privilege. The twins' secret was more than safe with him.

Sideswipe rolled out, heading back to his own quarters, his charge relieved for tonight at least.

Left behind, alone in the rec room, Lennox ran his hand back through his thinning hair, thinking back to his own start in life, and how far he'd come since. He'd had it easier than many, that much was for certain, and worse than others. And all his long lifetime, the wearisome years he'd been brooding over, was nothing, set against a journey in which four decades on Earth amounted to no more than a fleeting stop-over. Besides, as Prowl had said, outside appearances weren't everything.

His hair was grey, his muscle softened by the years. That was what other people might see. It wasn't what he was inside.

Lennox chuckled, seeing the humour now in fretting about his earlier doze. Even when he was doubled over with age, walking with a stick, and blinking in the light, he'd never be anything but a child beside his Autobot friends. If that meant he'd never lose his wide-eyed fascination with learning about them, and his delight in watching their own little one run rings around his elders, well then, that was all right with him.

The End